FBI chief: ‘Be suspicious’ of government power

[ Editors Note: My, my…this strikes me as more than a little strange, so it will be my shortest note to date. I am at a loss for words. This is the group that has accepted the stand down on Israeli espionage prosecutions. We need to see if he would do a long interview… Jim W. Dean ]

– First published May 22, 2014 –

The head of the FBI says he understands why people worry about the scope of the government’s powers, and in fact, he agrees with them.

“I believe people should be suspicious of government power. I am,” Director James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.

“I think this country was founded by people who were worried about government power so they divided it among three branches,” he added.

In the months since Edward Snowden leaked documents detailing the country’s intelligence programs, Comey said that “it’s hard for me, sometimes, to find the space and time to talk about what I do and why I do it.”

Though the controversial surveillance raised privacy concerns and made people fret that the government was snooping on their behavior, Comey said that the FBI’s programs are run responsibly. He added that those operations had also helped to track down kidnappers and save children.

Comey assumed his top post shortly after the Snowden revelations came to light last summer. While much of the public’s outrage has focused on activities at the National Security Agency, the FBI has also come under fire for its use of national security letters and operations to track foreign terrorists operating in the United States.

One of those efforts, which allows the government to track people outside the US who may be plotting terror attacks, is “extraordinarily valuable,” Comey told senators on the panel.

The efforts, which are authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, include a program called PRISM that taps into data networks at major Web companies like Google, Facebook and Skype. From there, agents can look at photos, emails and other documents people upload.

The FBI’s national security letters, which Comey said were not used to obtain bulk quantities of information about people, require banks, phone companies, Internet service providers and other firms to hand over details about their customers.

Recipients of the letters are largely prohibited from revealing details about the letters they get, which critics say amounts to a “gag order.”

Legislation is advancing in the House and Senate that would rein in those and other government data collection programs.

The House is scheduled to vote on the bill, called the USA Freedom Act, on Thursday, but some privacy advocates have worried that it has been overly watered down in recent weeks.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who introduced the upper chamber’s version of the surveillance reform bill, said on Wednesday that he was pleased by the House’s progress.

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Stew Webb 34 Years a Federal Whistle blower
Stew Webb served in the United States Marine Corps and was Honorable Discharge. Stew was a General Contractor-Home Builder until 3 car crashes in one year and is now disabled. Stew turned Federal Whistle blower – Activist of 31 years and has been a guest on over 3,000 Radio and TV Programs since September 18, 1991 and now has his own Radio and TV Network http://www.stewwebb.com Stew was responsible for the Congressional Investigations and hearings that lead to the Appointment of Independent Prosecutor Arlin Adams in the 1989 HUD Hearings, the Silverado Savings and Loan Hearings, the Denver International Airport Frauds hearings, the MDC Holdings, Inc. (MDC-NYSE) Illegal Political Campaign Money Laundering Colorado’s biggest case aka Keating 5 hearings and the information provided that lead to the 2008 Illegal Bank Bailout.
Stew was held as a Political Prisoner from 1992-1993 to silence his exposure by Leonard Millman his former in law with illegal charges of threatening harassing telephone calls charges which were dismissed with prejudice. Leonard Millman, George HW Bush, George W Bush, Jeb Bush, Neil Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Larry Mizel, Phil Winn, Norman Brownstein, John McCain and Mitt Romney to name a few are all partners in what is known as the Bush-Millman-Clinton Organized Crime Syndicate. Leonard Millman (Deceased 2004) was member of the “Illuminati Council of 13”

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